Confessions of a "non-facebooker".. or.. why the cost of admission is too steep! If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. - Andrew Lewis My colleague stood genuinely "stunned" for a few seconds while they tried to process the fact I was not on Facebook, had never used Facebook and clearly had no…
Category Archives Government
Three years ago today, I witnessed first-hand, the unrelenting and profoundly destructive force of the fires that created Australia's worst natural disaster in recorded history. The fires that began on February 7th 2009 "Black Saturday" took many lives, destroyed many homes and buildings and most certainly altered the psyche of many that I know, including me. 1000 plus degrees is…
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has put together another engaging interactive that personalises the 2006 Australian Census data for the user in an interesting and very visual way. [The 2011 Census in Australia was just completed in August ] The site is called "Spotlight" and takes some of the data from the last Census [2006] and shows just a few…
The disturbing scenes in London over the last few days bring in to a stark contrast the competing challenges of the immediate, short-term need for social order and the extended, long-term need for social inclusion. There are many thousands of pictures and words that will be written about this London summer. Jonathon Freedland, writing in the Guardian says: The soul…
One can't help but wonder if the the lack of agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties over the proposed extension of the US debt ceiling is anything more than grand political theatre, although this time it appears to be a different ball-game with the growing role and influence of the "tea-party" members. Perhaps more telling is the role of…
Some more wonderful musings by Kevin Kelly on specialisation and the growth of long-tail niches. These trends do have profound impacts for markets, education and most notably, Government policy; in fact the impact is and will be felt in all walks of life. I hope to write more about this later. Evolution moves from the general to the specific. The first…
Executive Director of the Lowy Institute, Michael Wesley, gave a short presentation in Melbourne, with the broad theme being that coming years are likely to see Australia facing the most challenging global environment in our history. Read on at CoreEcon.. Australia's next great challenge?.
Labour market. The unemployment numbers yesterday were again remarkably good relative to what is happening elsewhere in the world. The headline u/e rate is up to 5.8%. Since July last year we’ve lost about 160,000 full time jobs, but part time jobs are up about 127,000. Of course we need to create jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising,…
Local Government first to 2.0. In Australia, Government 2.0 is being pursued at a national level. However, in the US, some big cities have moved first. Here is an article about New York City’s initiatives and here is another about Boston’s moves [HT: Darren Challis] Early days yet but very interesting. [Core Economics]